No fewer than 172 Federal Road Safety Corps personnel have been arrested and are under investigation for corruption, the Corps Marshal, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi has disclosed.

He explained that 70 erring officers were arrested in two tactical moves through internal regulatory mechanisms, another 71 operatives were also nabbed while 31 others were apprehended by other security agencies and were being tried for various infractions.

Addressing journalists in Abuja on Friday about the anti-corruption drive of the corps, Oyeyemi stated that the FRSC had launched a joint special surveillance operation in collaboration with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission and the Department of State Services to target bad eggs in the service.

He said, “This clampdown became imperative in view of the need for complementary efforts by the FRSC as a corporate organisation with huge national investment to join the efforts being made by President Muhammadu Buhari to protect the huge national economic resources and intellectual property of the nation through the fight against corruption.”

The Corps Marshal said his administration was resolute in its commitment to sustain the clampdown on corrupt officers by identifying and ridding the corps of bad eggs to serve as deterrence to others.

“Our records show that in 2019 alone, a total of 62 personnel of the corps had their appointments terminated. They consist of 14 officers and 48 marshals with several others receiving various degrees of punishment in accordance with the provisions of the FRSC regulations on discipline,” Oyeyemi stated.

In furtherance of the campaign against corruption, the FRSC boss said the agency partnered with the Akin Fadeyi Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation to launch Flag-It, an app developed for reporting cases of extortion, bribery or disservice perpetrated by any of the corps’ operatives.

The Corps Marshal announced that an audit of articulated trucks would soon be carried out, adding that many of them were not designed for what they were being used for.